1. Field of the Invention
The present invention mainly relates to an improvement of the structure for accommodating a battery which is mounted in electronic equipment such as a portable computer or the like, and particularly to an improvement of a battery accommodating structure which is provided with a battery accommodating room having an opening portion formed in one face of a housing of the electronic equipment, and a battery cover for closing the opening portion.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, the mobile computing has grown prosperous and a mini note type personal computer which is achieved by further miniaturizing a portable computer having a color display, that is, a so-called conventional note type personal computer has appeared. However, the mobile computing has the following problems to be settled.
A first subject to be achieved resides in the miniaturization of electronic equipment (personal computer) to implement the environments of the mobile computing. However, although the miniaturization of the electronic equipment is a subject to be achieved, it is very useful for a user of electronic equipment that the display screen and keyboard thereof are designed in properly large size. Accordingly, with respect to parts other than the display screen and the keyboard, it has been highly required to design these parts so that the projection areas of the parts on the mount plane therefor in the electronic equipment are reduced at maximum. Further, the same requirement has been made to the thickness of the electronic equipment and if the electronic equipment is designed in large thickness in order to suppress the projection areas of the parts, it is contradictory to the miniaturization requirement of the electronic equipment.
A second subject to be achieved resides in the increase of the capacity of batteries to keep a sufficient driving time even for a portable computer needing large power consumption which is equipped with a color display, etc. On the other hand, the volume and shape of the battery greatly affects the volume of the electronic equipment. Considering this problem in combination with the first subject, the miniaturization of the battery is also needed in order to promote the miniaturization of the electronic equipment. However, the reduction of the volume of the battery results in reduction of the capacity of the battery. This is contradictory to the capacity increasing requirement.
A third subject to be achieved resides in the reduction of large loads which is needed to develop special-purpose batteries. In order to achieve the first and second subjects, for a large number of electronic equipment (personal computers), battery packs which are exclusively used for the electronic equipment are developed and produced while ornamented as external mount parts. The special-purpose batteries are more deteriorated than general-purpose batteries in all respects such as development term, development cost, unit price, etc.
A fourth subject to be achieved resides in the enhancement of the resistance to drop impact of the electronic equipment. In the mobile computing environments, it is an important subject to enhance the resistance to drop impact of the electronic equipment. Besides, as described above, such a structure that a battery serving as the most important part to drive the electronic equipment is exposed to the outside as an external mount part is not favorable. This is because if drop impact is directly applied to the battery, the battery would be broken and the electronic equipment could not be driven.